PERICARDITIS occurs commonly in the terminal stages of chronic renal failure.1 Until recently the pericarditis was of minor importance, serving only as a warning that early death was a strong probability. Lately reports have appeared of uremic pericarditis with a hemorrhagic characteristic producing tamponade or even constriction.2-4 As procedures for dialysis and transplantation improve, more patients have potentially reversible or even curable uremia. Under these circumstances the recognition and surgical treatment of uremic constrictive pericarditis become of practical importance. Dialysis may alleviate the uremia and permit surgical excision of the pericardium. The patient to be described lived long enough to die with some of the clinical features of constrictive pericarditis. This report is published to alert others to this condition in the hope that death can be avoided in future cases.

Report of a CaseA 30-year-old woman was first admitted to the Toronto General Hospital on Jan